Sartaj Singh
After a lot of rumors and speculations, The Cinemaholic can now reveal the fate of Freevee’s ‘Jury Duty.’ The streaming platform has renewed the sleeper hit comedy show for its second season. The sophomore installment will start filming in Agoura Hills, California, in September 2024. Cody Heller and Jake Szymanski will continue to serve as the showrunner and director of the series, respectively.
In the first season, wannabe juror Ronald Gladden thought he was walking into an actual courtroom, but unbeknownst to him, everyone else there was an actor. As he began settling into his new role, the antics of his fellow jurors began, drawing genuine confusion and hilarious reactions from Gladden. Their trial was related to Jacqueline Hilgrove, a businesswoman who accused her employee, Trevor Morris, of causing damage to her business. On the basis of property damage and emotional distress, she sought $1.8 million from Morris. However, the defendant was shown to be in poor financial condition and living with his mother, putting the jury in a moral dilemma of ruining his life if he lost the case.
For Gladden, the drama continued both inside and outside the courtroom. While wacky confessions, comments, and statements were made, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was in a reality show. Furthermore, he grew close to his fellow jury members, who stayed in character throughout, conversing or going out with him. Unexpectedly, Gladden’s positive reactions to the strange behaviors and talks thrown his way made the show quite wholesome, ending on a positive note with the grand reveal.
As far as season 2 is concerned, James Marsden believes that the entire premise and cast may have to change since what they achieved with the first installment was a once-in-a-lifetime creation that cannot be recreated. He also knew that the show would go on regardless, given its ingenious genre-bending premise. “Not with me, I would imagine, and not with the cast,” he told Variety when asked about a second season. “Maybe not with jury duty as a backdrop. Something’s got to. You can’t have a show like this hit the zeitgeist like it did and have it go away completely,” he added.
The executive producers of the show believe that the show is infinitely repeatable as long as they can continue to find believable backdrops. “The show’s very specifically built where every episode someone brings a premise to Ronald, and it’s Ronald deciding how he’s going to interact. All those [bits] were for the idea, ‘Can you then give [Ronald] the confidence to then be the hero in Episode 7?’ I think we can take that same theme and premise and apply it to other areas outside of a jury trial,” David Bernad, one of the executive producers, told Variety about the future of the series.
Located in the eastern Conejo Valley between the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains, Agoura Hills is a charming suburb of Los Angeles and offers a variety of interesting backdrops for the second season. The first installment was also shot in Los Angeles, at the Huntington Park courthouse. Other comedy productions filmed in Agoura Hills include ‘The Animal,’ ‘The Untold Story,’ ‘The Benchwarmers,’ ‘Blast from the Past,’ and ‘Little Big Man.’
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